tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99031882007-11-17T16:10:40.890-05:00RamRamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-88553244162987948742007-06-12T13:46:00.000-05:002007-06-12T14:03:57.842-05:00A Great Enlightening Commencement Address<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td class="Header">William Jefferson Clinton Commencement Address</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="SubHeader">Transcript of remarks to graduating seniors at Knox College</td> </tr> </tbody></table> June 02, 2007<br /><p>PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much, President Taylor. I must say, that�??s the most creatively humorous presentation of an honorary degree I have ever heard. I am ready at this very moment, Professor Factor, to accept a job. And since I have a good pension, I can work cheap. I�??d like to thank President Taylor, the members of the board, and the elected officials in the audience.</p><p>I also am honored to be receiving an honorary degree with Professor Wilson, whose work I very much admire. I read <em>Honor�??s Voice</em> when I was President and was quite moved by it. And with Janet McKinley, who does such wonderful work with Oxfam and with Grameen USA.</p><p>For those of you who are looking for something good to do in the world to empower people to work themselves out of poverty, I recommend the microcredit movement. I was pleased last year when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh, whom Janet knows, and for whom I campaigned relentlessly for 14 years to get the Nobel Prize. He told me that after he received it, the Nobel committee said, �??Maybe Bill Clinton will quit calling us now.�??</p><p>Many people know that this microcredit movement is a grassroots movement where 97 percent of the loans, at least in Bangladesh, go to village women, where the repayment rate is almost 99 percent, higher than the commercial bank repayment rate. But for the purposes that bring me here, the most important statistic is this: 58 percent of the people use those loans, in a country with a per capita income of little more than a dollar a day, to lift themselves above the international poverty line. That is part of what I want to talk about, because you live in a world where intelligence, ability, energy, and dreams are pretty well evenly distributed, but education, opportunity, organization, and investment are not.</p><p>I spent most of my life in politics, and I loved it. I got tickled listening to the parallel stories of Abraham Lincoln coming here as a Republican and me coming as a Democrat. I was thinking that Knox has always been remarkably consistent. This university was born in the throes of the anti-slavery movement and was revolutionary from its beginning in being open to people of color and to women. So this is not such a balancing act after all, because if I had been alive when you gave the degree to Abraham Lincoln, I would have been a Republican. And if he were alive today, I think he�??d be a Democrat.</p><p>The fifth debate Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas had here was an interesting one because it contained at the time Lincoln�??s most passionate attack on slavery. But that has tended to obscure what I think were the good intentions of his fellow citizen of Illinois, Stephen Douglas, as they were setting up what would later become their contest for the Presidency in 1860. Both of them were moving away from the extremes in their parties, struggling to find a way to hold the country together. When Lincoln ran for President in 1860, the truth is that�??s why he got this honorary degree. Your college was trying to help him get elected, and you wanted to give him a little boost. One hundred forty-six years later, you gave Stephen Colbert a degree to give his ratings a boost. That�??s what Al Gore now calls an assault on reason. In 2007, you�??re giving me an honorary degree so I can be attacked by Stephen Colbert.</p><p>John Quincy Adams once said after leaving the White House that there is nothing in life so pathetic as a former President. The good news is you can say whatever you want; the bad news is no one cares what you have to say anymore.</p><p>I want to say something seriously about what you�??re going to do with the rest of your life, whatever you get a degree in. I�??m here for one reason, because John Podesta, class of 1971, was my chief of staff, has been my friend for about 37 years, is one of the ablest public servants and finest human beings I have ever known, and I would do anything he asked me to do. For eight years, we were arm in arm in the great struggles to prepare our country for the 21st century, to provide opportunity to all the people in America, to create a genuine sense of community of responsible citizens, and to move the world toward peace and prosperity and harmony.</p><p>I believe that is consistent with the driving passion of Abraham Lincoln�??s life, for he wanted, above all, to preserve the Union. He knew it required both individual liberties and rational compromises.</p><p>In the modern world, we are engaged anew and more urgently in a search for unity. It is a global search, but also a local one. You live in a time when knowledge is doubling every five years or so. Just in the couple of weeks before you came here to celebrate your commencement, there have been two astonishing scientific discoveries. One is all the people who are plumbing the depths of the human genome have discovered two variances which appear to be very high predictors of vulnerability to diabetes. This is really important in the aftermath of a recent study predicting that as many as one in three children born in this decade may develop diabetes, when the rising rates of childhood obesity have given us statistically significant numbers of children with what we used to call adult onset diabetes, something that never happened before. Last year we had a 9-year-old in Harlem, where my office is, diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. So finding these mysteries is important, and if we can do something to head this off, it will avoid running the risk that the youngest generation of Americans could become the first to have shorter lifespans than their parents. It�??s a big deal.</p><p>Then a couple days after that, I picked up the paper and I read that in one of the 100 stars closest to our own solar system, of all of the hundreds of billions of bodies in the universe, there is a planet orbiting which appears to have atmospheric conditions so close to our own that life might be possible. Alas, because it�??s still 20 million light years away, we can�??t find out. That is, unless you know some families here in Galesburg who are willing to commit to three or four generations on a spaceship. Otherwise, we�??ll just have to wait for them to come to us. </p><p>It�??s a stunning time. And the more we learn about all this, the more those of you who have a good education can take advantage of it. </p><p>It�??s also a more interesting time. Think about the difference in what this student body looks like and what it looked like when Mr. Lincoln got his honorary degree. Or what it looked like when Presidents McKinley and Taft were here. Or what it looked like just 30 years ago. You have students from virtually every American state, over 40 foreign nations, people from every different racial and ethnic group and different religious backgrounds. It�??s sort of a microcosm of the globally interdependent world which you will soon enter.</p><p>It�??s a much more interesting class and a more interesting world than it was 30 years ago, because we�??re bumping up against one another. But it has some significant challenges that you must meet if you�??d like your grandchildren to be here 50 years from now. Climate change and the depletion of resources from trees and water and topsoil and plant and animal species and even oil itself make this an unsustainable time. We have to develop a way to grow that will permit others to follow us. Terror and weapons of mass destruction and the prospect of global disease epidemics like avian influenza make it an unstable time. We have to find a way to work together to minimize the forces of destruction and maximize those of unity.</p><p>This is also a dramatically unequal time, due to poverty, disease, the fact that 130 million kids never go to school, and one-fourth of all deaths this year will come from AIDS, TB, malaria, infections related to dirty water. Eighty percent of the people in the last category are under five years old. Even in America in the six years of recovery, which have been very good to people like me, median wages are stagnant and there�??s been an increase in the percentage of people working full-time falling below the poverty line and losing their health insurance. It�??s an unequal time here and around the world.</p><p>Complicating our ability to do what we need to do to deal with unsustainable, unstable, and unequal factors is the prevalence of a politics that is far more primitive at home and around the world than the problems we must confront, and one which tends to lag behind the consciousness of people who are thinking about what�??s going on.</p><p>We tend to be divided, all around the world, by religious, political, even psychological differences between those who need an enemy and those who are trying to make a friend, between those who believe our differences matter more than our common humanity and those who believe that our differences make life interesting and aid the search for truth, but our common humanity must always matter more.</p><p>Therefore, your first decision must be in which camp you will plant your banner. Do you need an enemy or, like Lincoln, will you accept one only if there is no other alternative? Do you relish your differences, but recognize that our common humanity is more important? Is your very identity caught up in the idea that you have to look at some other people with negative reference for religious, political, or other reasons, or do you feel more fulfilled when you look with pride on someone else�??s accomplishments and identify with their longings, their dreams, their successes, and their disappointments?</p><p>All the education in the world, all the knowledge in the world will not empower you to solve the problems of the current day or guarantee that your grandchildren can be in a place like this 50 years from now if you don�??t answer that first question in the right way. </p><p>Citizens today have more power to do public good than ever before without regard to their politics. I appreciate the mention of former President Bush. He and I have become very, very close friends. We�??ve worked around the world on the tsunami, we worked in the Gulf Coast area in the aftermath of Katrina. Every summer I schedule a day to go spend with him and let him drive me around in that crazy speedboat of his, acting like he�??s younger than I am. He�??s 82 years old, still jumping out of airplanes. When I was President, I fell off a 10-inch step and tore my quadriceps in half. I love the guy.</p><p>Do we have differences of opinion? Absolutely. Do we argue and fight over this or that issue? Of course we do. But I believe at bottom he is a good human being. I revere the 50 years of service he�??s given to our country. I do not feel the need to look down on him to feel better about my party, my politics, or my life. </p><p>The sequencing of the human genome was completed when John and I were in our last year of service in Washington in 2000. I put lots of your money into that human genome research. I wanted to get to the end of the road before I left office so that we could begin to study all the mysteries and find solutions to all the physical problems that I believe genomic research will permit.</p><p>But the most important thing that I learned as a layperson from the sequencing of the human genome, with 3 billion of them in our bodies, is that every human being on earth genetically is 99.9 percent the same. Go figure. Just look around this crowd. Every difference you see between yourself and someone else, the color of your skin, the color of your hair, the color of your eyes, the shape of your body, every single thing is rooted in one-tenth of one percent of your genetic makeup. And yet, think about how all of us basically spend 90 percent of our time thinking about that one-tenth of one percent. Right? We do. We don�??t have to be a fanatic to be like that. I think, �??Oh, I wish I were as thin as he is. I�??d like to be as young as he is, but at least I�??m not as old as he is. I can�??t hit a golf ball 300 yards anymore, but at least I can do better than that old coot.�??</p><p>All of us think like this, right? And it�??s all rooted in one-tenth of one percent. It�??s okay, because that�??s also the source of our creative juices and differences. But we need the emotional and psychological freedom that being aware of our common humanity gives us. That�??s what leads us into service. That�??s what leads us to make the most of our ability as private citizens to do public good.</p><p>Most of the people that I work for today didn�??t vote for me. They live around the world. We�??ll have 100,000 more kids on AIDS medicine who will now live normal lives this year. By the time they go to school and start reading newspaper articles in Africa, in India, in China, in Latin America, I�??ll be ancient history and they�??ll probably never know who I am. But it doesn�??t matter if we�??re 99.9 percent the same, because that�??s just about one-tenth of one percent.</p><p>That�??s what I wish for you: the joy that comes from all you got out of this university education to develop your mind and to enjoy what is special and unique about you. Keep in mind, with 3 billion genomes in a body, even one-tenth of one percent is a pretty healthy number. But I also wish you the peace of mind and the strength of character and the rootedness that comes from remembering what you have in common with others.</p><p>The other night I was in New York City having dinner with a bunch of friends of mine. I looked up, and about two tables over from me was Rush Limbaugh. I went over and shook his hand. It was the first time I ever had seen him, I think. I had a little visit with him. And I was so tempted after all the terrible things he�??d said about me to tell him that he and I were exactly 99.9 percent the same. And I thought if I did that, the poor man will run weeping from the room and never even get his dessert. So I let it go.</p><p>Next month, I will make my annual pilgrimage to Africa to see the work we�??re doing in AIDS and development and to share the 89th birthday of my friend Nelson Mandela. When I look at him, I can�??t imagine that we�??re 99.9 percent the same, because even though we�??re friends, I hold him in such awe.</p><p>I say that to all of you to remember that if you put us together from greatest to least on this earth, you could hardly stick a straw between any of us. And I think you will find your greatest power, whatever you do for a living, if you take some time to serve. If you always work on trying to balance the enjoyment of your differences, including vigorous arguments, with the centering power of your common humanity, it is the single most significant thing that you have to do.</p><p>If you look at the troubles in the Middle East, if you look at how the Shi�??a and the Sunni kill each other in Iraq, at the way the Taliban oppressed women in Afghanistan, the miseries of Darfur, people walking away from the realities of climate change, you name any problem in the world, the people driving the division without exception believe that what is special about them and their power and their money and their position is more important than their common humanity or their obligations to the next generation of humanity still to come. That is the fundamental question every single person must answer to make the most of this modern age.</p><p>The Torah says that he who turns aside a stranger might as well turn aside from the most high God. The Koran says that Allah put different people on earth not that they might despise one another, but that they might know one another and learn from one another. The Christian New Testament says that next to the commandment to love God, the second most important one is to love your neighbor as yourself. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says that you�??re not really human unless you feel the arrow piercing another�??s skin as if it had pierced your own.</p><p>So it turns out that all the ancient wisdom gets confirmed when they sequence the human genome and find out that all of our differences amount to one-tenth of one percent of our makeup, and that we really can�??t do anything alone.</p><p>In South Africa, where Mandela and I started a biracial youth service program like AmeriCorps that works in the townships, the kids adopted as their motto the Xhosa term �??Ubuntu,�?? which means, roughly translated into English: �??I am because you are.�?? If we cannot meaningfully exist without one another, then by definition what we have in common is more important than our differences.</p><p>I think all of you should think about that as you leave. I think nobody in this graduating class has a racist bone in their bodies. You don�??t have an elitist bone in your body either. I could tell that the way you clapped for the grounds staff that put the chairs up. That meant a lot to me. But you have gifts. And it is very important that we make the most of our gifts without falling too much in love with them.</p><p>North of Mandela�??s home, in the central highlands of Africa, where we also do our AIDS work, there�??s a fascinating tradition of greeting. When people meet each other on a path, the first person will say, �??Hello. How are you?�?? But the answer is not, �??I�??m fine.�?? The answer, translated into English is, �??I see you.�?? Think of that. Think of all the people in this world today who will not be seen.</p><p>The reason I was so happy that you clapped for the grounds staff is that every place there�??s a commencement exercise in America, we�??ll all get up and leave, and somebody will have to come in and clean up after us. And they�??ll have to fold up the chairs and clean off the litter. Some places the sod will be torn up and it will have to be resodded. And enormous numbers of the people who do that work feel like they are never seen. </p><p>So for you, I wish you the most of the modern world. I ask you to serve in some way. And I ask that your service, and your politics, whether you consider yourself conservative or liberal, Republican, Democrat, or independent, always be rooted in the unifying humility which Abraham Lincoln exhibited when he said, �??We must proceed with malice toward none.�?? </p><p>The only way you can give up your malice, your anger, and your division is if you believe that our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences, that I am because you are. And if you see your fellow human beings, all of them, and act accordingly, your grandchildren will be here 50 years from now, and you will live by a long stretch in the most fascinating time the world has ever known.</p><p>Good luck and God bless you all.</p>Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2007/06/great-enlightening-commencement-address.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-62039339926696229982007-05-31T08:24:00.000-05:002007-05-31T08:44:04.839-05:00Historian Bill Maher on BushJimmy Carter must be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. Last weekend, former U.S. president and current Al Qaeda operative--Jimmy Carter, launched an unprovoked attack upon democracy itself by telling an Arkansas newspaper that the Bush Administration has been the worst in history. And people were shocked... Arkansas has newspapers?!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">But, once again, we were sucked into a phony controversy about who said what and how it hurts George Bush's feelings. Because when you hurt George Bush, you hurt America's feelings; and when you hurt America's feelings, you hurt the troops. And when that happens, Tinker Bell's light goes out and she dies.</span><br /><br />Now, as for Carter's assertion, I was up all night on Wikipedia doing an exhaustive study of former presidents. And while other presidents have sucked in their own individual ways, Bush is like a smorgasbord of "suck." He -- he combines the corruption of Warren G. Harding, the war-mongering of James Polk, and the abuse of power of Richard Nixon.<br /><br />Nixon got in trouble for illegally wiretapping Democratic headquarters. Bush is illegally wiretapping the entire country! <br /><br />Nixon opened up relations with the Chinese. Bush let them poison your dog. <br /><br />Herbert Hoover, who was literally named after a machine that sucks--sat on his ass through four years of Depression, but he was an actual engineer. And if someone told him about global warming, he would have understood it before the penguins caught on fire.<br /><br />Ulysses S. Grant let his cronies loot the republic, but he won his Civil War. <br /><br />Harding...Harding sucked, but he once said, "I am not fit for this office and never should have been here." So at least he knew he sucked. He never walked offstage like Bush does after one of his embarrassing, language-mangling press conferences--with that smirk on his face like, "Nailed it!" Or maybe that's just the look you get when you have a showdown with the Democrats, and you win. Like he just did with Iraq. You don't get to become the worst president ever without a little help from the other side.<br /><br />You know, I like Jimmy Carter, but when the -- when the Republican "fake outrage" machine pretended to be so upset at his remarks, Carter did what Democrats do, and backed down. He said his words were careless and misquoted, and the sun was in his eyes, and his hearing aid went out, and he was molested by a clergyman.<br /><br />Instead of looking them in the eye and saying, "No, I meant what I said because it's true! And speaking as the first citizen of Habitat for Humanity, let me take out my Jimmy Carter toolbox and build you a house where we can meet, and you can blow me."Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2007/05/historian-bill-maher-on-bush.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-19126971117053021032007-05-29T18:04:00.000-05:002007-05-29T18:09:28.905-05:00Mayor Assails Bill in Congress on Immigration<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">Mayor Assails Bill in Congress on Immigration </nyt_headline> <nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "> </nyt_byline><div class="byline">By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/anthony_ramirez/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Anthony Ramirez">ANTHONY RAMIREZ</a></div> <nyt_text> </nyt_text> <p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_pknTcrWrnm4/RlyxvISWKPI/AAAAAAAAAAM/rCC-EDWVL5Q/s1600-h/nycmayor.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_pknTcrWrnm4/RlyxvISWKPI/AAAAAAAAAAM/rCC-EDWVL5Q/s400/nycmayor.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070122703748737266" border="0"></a>Mayor <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Michael R. Bloomberg.">Michael R. Bloomberg</a>, in unusually pointed and broad language, criticized Congress yesterday for parts of a comprehensive <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration_and_refugees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about immigration.">immigration</a> bill now being debated in the Senate. </p> <p>Speaking after a Memorial Day parade in Laurelton, Queens, which has a thriving Caribbean community, Mr. Bloomberg said in response to a reporter�??s question, �??Shame on Congress, who can�??t get together�?? on the immigration issue.</p> <p> The Senate bill has come under partisan attack even before the House of Representatives can propose its version. </p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">Lawmakers �??should all look back on their history,�?? said Mr. Bloomberg, a small American flag draped on his lectern as he spoke to reporters, �??and realize that if we had had the laws that they are proposing in many cases, they wouldn�??t be here because their parents or grandparents would not have been here.�??</p> <p>The mayor spoke near what is known as Veterans Memorial Triangle, a patch of green maintained at 225th Street, 143rd Avenue and North Conduit Avenue by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 5298.</p> <p>The teenage musicians of the Elite Marching Band of St. Albans, Queens, performed an earnest rendition of the national anthem. Cub Scouts fiddled with their kerchiefs during the grown-ups�?? speeches. Toddlers covered their ears and cried during a four-gun salute. </p> <p>Mr. Bloomberg was especially critical of the guest-worker provision of the Senate bill, strongly supported by many in his own <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Republican Party">Republican Party</a>. Immigrants would enter the country for three stints of two years each, going home for one year between each stint and returning home permanently after the third.</p> <p>�??The guest-worker program is a joke,�?? he said. �??Nobody�??s going to go home for a year and come back. Nobody could ever enforce that. Nobody in their right mind would ever try to do it.�??</p> <p>He reiterated his praise for the bill�??s rejection of mass deportations of the country�??s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. About 400,000 undocumented immigrants are thought to be in New York City.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">�??We don�??t have an army big enough to deport them,�?? Mr. Bloomberg said. �??It would destroy the economy if you deported them. They are here, yes, against the law, but they�??re here with the complicity of the U.S. government. The U.S. government deliberately looked away since 1986, the last time we had immigration reform.�??</p> <p>He praised the bill�??s citizenship provisions as a promising start. �??Having something that gives them permanent status and some road to citizenship is a big step forward,�?? Mr. Bloomberg said. �??You don�??t want that road to be so impossible that they can�??t do it.</p> <p>�??On the other hand,�?? he continued, �??you don�??t want to also make that road something that doesn�??t include learning to speak English, learning the culture of this country, the laws of this country and the history of this country.�??</p> <p> Not all the policy questions came from reporters. Adrienne Gordon, 14, an eighth grader at Tri-Community Junior High School 231, said she had three questions for the mayor.</p> <p>�??How come,�?? she said quietly, �??teachers these days in school, they don�??t base their grades that they give the students on what they do in class? They base the grades on if they like the student or not?�?? </p> <p>The mayor said: �??I can�??t promise that every one of our 80,000 teachers does it the right way. But I think that most of them base it on what you do in the classroom.�??</p> <p>Then, Adrienne asked what the mayor was doing to reduce class size. He acknowledged that even with the largest school construction budget in municipal history, the city had been able to reduce class size by only a small percentage. �??But what the teacher does in front of the classroom is more important than class size,�?? he said.</p> <p>The third question? In a voice that could barely be heard, Adrienne asked, �??I was wondering if you could take a picture with us?�??</p>Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2007/05/mayor-assails-bill-in-congress-on.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1166335510923936492006-12-17T01:05:00.000-05:002007-02-09T00:19:45.160-05:00Our Country by John Mellencamp<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/U0HTff63E0I"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/U0HTff63E0I" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br />Well I can stand beside ideals I think are right<br />and I can stand beside<br />the idea to stand and fight<br />I do believe there's a dream for everyone<br />This is our country<br /><br />There's room enough here<br />for science to live<br />and there's room enough here<br />for religion to forgive<br />and try to understand<br />all the people of this land<br />this is our country<br /><br />From the east coast to the west coast<br />down the dixie highway back home<br />this is our country<br /><br />And poverty could be just another ugly thing<br />and bigotry would be seen only as obscene<br />and the ones who run this land<br />help the poor and common man<br />this is our country<br /><br />From the east coast to the west coast<br />down the dixie highway back home<br />this is our country<br /><br />The dream is still alive<br />someday it will come true<br />and this country<br />it belongs to folks like me and you<br />so let the voice of freedom<br />sing out through this land<br />this is our country<br /><br />From the east coast to the west coast<br />down the dixie highway back home<br />this is our country<br />From the east coast to the west coast<br />down the dixie highway back home<br />this is our countryRamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2006/12/our-country-by-john-mellencamp.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1164415387279598032006-11-24T19:43:00.000-05:002007-05-31T08:57:51.527-05:00The diverse origins of our liberalismOur liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well...<br /><br />Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and builders of the American labor movement. They are the men who sweated in our shops, who struggled to create a union, and who were driven by longing for education for their children and for the children's development. They went to night schools; they built their own future, their union's future, and their country's future, brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in their children's time, suburb by suburb...<br /><br />This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort. The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope.<br /><br />I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of our country. I am proposing that 1960 be another turning point in the history of the great Republic.<br /><br />John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 09/14/1960 - Acceptance of the New York Liberal Party NominationRamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2006/11/diverse-origins-of-our-liberalism.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1157404641704935722006-09-04T16:17:00.000-05:002006-09-28T00:07:43.606-05:00Many Entry-Level Workers Feel Pinch of Rough MarketMany Entry-Level Workers Feel Pinch of Rough Market<br />By STEVEN GREENHOUSE<br /><br />This Labor Day, the 45 million young people in the nation�??s work force face a choppy job market in which entry-level wages have often trailed inflation, making it hard for many to cope with high housing costs and rising college debt loads.<br /><br />Entry-level wages for college and high school graduates fell by more than 4 percent from 2001 to 2005, after factoring in inflation, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute. In addition, the percentage of college graduates receiving health and pension benefits in their entry-level jobs has dropped sharply.<br /><br />Some labor experts say wage stagnation and the sharp increase in housing costs over the past decade have delayed workers ages 20 to 35 from buying their first homes.<br /><br />�??People are getting married later, they�??re having children later, and they�??re buying houses later,�?? said Cecilia E. Rouse, an economist at Princeton University and a co-editor of a forthcoming book on the economics of early adulthood. �??There�??s been a lengthening of the transition to adulthood, and it is very possible that what has happened in the economy is leading to some of these changes.�??<br /><br />Census Bureau data released last week underlined the difficulties for young workers, showing that median income for families with at least one parent age 25 to 34 fell $3,009 from 2000 to 2005, sliding to $48,405, a 5.9 percent drop, after having jumped 12 percent in the late 1990�??s.<br /><br />Worsening the financial crunch, far more college graduates are borrowing to pay for their education, and the amount borrowed has jumped by more than 50 percent in recent years, largely because of soaring tuition.<br /><br />In 2004, 50 percent of graduating seniors borrowed some money for college, with their debt load averaging $19,000, Dr. Rouse said. That was a sharp increase from 1993, when 35 percent of seniors borrowed for college and their debt averaged $12,500, in today�??s dollars.<br /><br />Even though the economy has grown strongly in recent years, wages for young workers, especially college graduates, have been depressed by several factors, including the end of the high-tech boom and the trend of sending jobs overseas. From 2001 to 2005, entry-level wages for male college graduates fell by 7.3 percent, to $19.72 an hour, while wages for female graduates declined 3.5 percent, to $17.08, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group.<br /><br />�??In a weak labor market, younger workers do the worst,�?? said Lawrence Mishel, the institute�??s president. �??Young workers are on the cutting edge of experiencing all the changes in the economy.�??<br /><br />Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, said plenty of slack remained in the job market for young workers.<br /><br />The percentage of young adults who are working has dropped since 2000 largely because many have grown discouraged and stopped looking for work. This has happened even though the unemployment rate, which counts only people looking for work, has fallen to 4.4 percent for those ages 25 to 34. It is 8.2 percent for workers ages 20 to 24.<br /><br />�??Any way you slice the data, the labor market has been pretty weak the past five years,�?? Dr. Katz said. �??But hotshot young people coming out of top universities have done fine, just like top-notch executives have.�??<br /><br />In a steep drop over a short time, 64 percent of college graduates received health coverage in entry-level jobs in 2005, down from 71 percent five years earlier. As employers grapple with fast-rising health costs, many companies have reduced health coverage, with those cutbacks sharpest among young workers.<br /><br />Partly because of the decline in manufacturing jobs that were a ticket to middle-class life, just one-third of workers with high school diplomas receive health coverage in entry-level jobs, down from two-thirds in 1979.<br /><br />After an extensive job search, Katey Rich, who graduated from Wesleyan University in June, landed a part-time, $14-an-hour job in Manhattan as an editorial assistant at Film Journal International. With one-bedroom apartments often renting for $2,000 a month, Ms. Rich is looking to share an apartment but is staying with a friend�??s parents for now. And while she is excited about her new job, she said she was concerned that it did not come with health insurance.<br /><br />�??I�??ll have to fend for myself,�?? said Ms. Rich, who is from Aiken, S.C. �??I have parents who will back me up if things get really rough.�??<br /><br />Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody�??s Economy.com, said it was surprising how deeply young workers were going into debt to maintain the living standards they want.<br /><br />The nation�??s personal savings sank below zero last year for the first time since the Depression, meaning Americans spent more than they earned. But for households under 35, the saving rate has plunged to minus 16 percent, which means they are spending 16 percent more than they are earning.<br /><br />�??The post-boomer generation feels very cavalier about saving,�?? Mr. Zandi said. �??They�??ve been very aggressively dis-saving and have borrowed significantly.�??<br /><br />John Arnold, 28, a materials-handling specialist at a Caterpillar factory in Morton, Ill., said he was having a hard time making ends meet. At his factory, Caterpillar has pressured the union to accept a two-tier contract in which newer workers like him will earn a maximum of $13.26 an hour �?? $27,000 a year for a full-time worker �?? no matter how long they work. For longtime Caterpillar workers in the upper tier, the wage ceiling is often $20 or more an hour.<br /><br />�??A few people I work with are living at home with their parents; some are even on food stamps,�?? said Mr. Arnold, a Caterpillar worker for seven years. �??I was hoping to buy a house this year, but there�??s just no way I can swing it.�?? With just a high school diploma, he said it was hard to find jobs that paid more.<br /><br />For men with high school diplomas, entry-level pay fell by 3.3 percent, to $10.93, from 2001 to 2005, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For female high school graduates, entry-level pay fell by 4.9 percent, to $9.08 an hour.<br /><br />Labor Department officials voiced optimism for young workers, noting that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had projected that 18.9 million net new jobs would be created by 2014.<br /><br />�??The future is bright for young people because the opportunities are out there,�?? said Mason Bishop, deputy assistant labor secretary for employment and training. �??We want to help them get access to the postsecondary education that enables them to take advantage of the opportunities.�??<br /><br />The wage gap between college-educated and high-school-educated workers has widened greatly, with college graduates earning 45 percent more than high school graduates, up from 23 percent in 1979.<br /><br />Professor Rouse of Princeton said a college degree added $402,000 to a graduate�??s lifetime earnings.<br /><br />Alex Shayevsky, who graduated from New York University last year, said majoring in business had paid off. Mr. Shayevsky got a job in the bond department of a major investment bank in New York. He earns $65,000, not including a bonus that could be at least half his salary.<br /><br />�??Getting my degree was very valuable,�?? said Mr. Shayevsky, a 23-year-old from Buffalo Grove, Ill.<br /><br />Martin Regalia, chief economist for the United States Chamber of Commerce, said young workers would be helped greatly if strong economic growth continued and the labor market tightened further, as happened in the late 1990�??s.<br /><br />Sheldon H. Danziger, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, sees a bifurcated labor market for young workers.<br /><br />�??You�??re much better off as a young worker today if you�??re the child of the well-to-do and you get a good education,�?? Professor Danziger said, �??and you�??re much worse off if you�??re a child of a blue-collar worker and you don�??t go to college. There�??s increasing inequality among young people just as there is increasing inequality among their parents.�??Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2006/09/many-entry-level-workers-feel-pinch-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1155255006397506852006-08-10T19:10:00.000-05:002006-08-10T20:43:20.900-05:00My 20-year planDuring the speedy 10-hour drive from Atlanta to Baltimore, I thought about what I want to accomplished in the years to come, or a 20-year plan if you will. Here is a sketch of the timeline:<br /><br />2006 (age 23): Received undergraduate degrees from Georgia Tech<br />2006-2012 (age 24-29): Earn a Master's degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins Department of Economics<br />2012-2018 (age 30-35): Make money in DC/NYC and start my own investment fund<br />2018-2021 (age 36-38): Attend Georgetown/NYU/Columbia law school for a J.D.<br />2021-2022 (age 39): Study abroad (Canada/the UK) at a law school for a L.L.M.<br />2022-2027 (age 40-44): Work for the Carter Center/Clinton foundation/Gates-Buffett foundation/federal government<br />2027- (age 45): Build a community shelter home for abused children and single-parent families and prepare for death<br /><br />Wishful thinking, I know. It'd be so nice if I can get half of them done before I die.Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2006/08/my-20-year-plan.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1155254845659067822006-07-23T12:33:00.000-05:002006-08-10T19:09:29.676-05:00InspirationFrom the <a href="http://www.law.georgetown.edu/gls/2001scholars.html">Georgetown Global Law Scholars profiles</a>, here is the biography of Ms. Deutsch:<br /><br />Ruthanne Deutsch graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D in Economics, was a Copeland Colloquium Fellow (1989) at Amherst College, a visiting scholar (1988) at the Fundacao Casa de Rui Barbosa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and graduated cum laude from Amherst College with a B.A. in Economics in 1983. Prior to attending law school, Ruthanne spent twelve years working in policy research, sector analysis and strategy development in the international development arena, first with the World Bank and then with the Inter-American Development Bank. Her research emphasized the economic benefits of investing in the human capital of the poor, covering the areas of labor markets, reform of social service delivery systems, poverty reduction, targeted social programs and early childhood development. She has participated in the design and supervision of World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank projects in Latin America, the Caribbean, and southern Africa. She is fluent in Spanish and proficient in Portuguese. During her first law school summer, Ruthanne worked as a research assistant to Professor Jane E. Stromseth, analyzing the theoretical issues and implementation challenges of reconstructing the Rule of Law in post-conflict societies. Her second summer was spent at the law firms of Hogan and Hartson, LLP and Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP, where she worked on trade, international antitrust and international telecommunications matters. After graduation, Ruthanne will be clerking for Judge Timothy B. Dyk of the United States Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2006/07/inspiration.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1152960797204111972006-07-15T05:53:00.000-05:002006-07-20T17:40:07.126-05:00The demonization of the word LIBERAL"Long ago, there was a noble word, LIBERAL, which derived from the word FREE [libre]. Now a strange thing happened to that word. A man named Hitler made it a term of abuse, a matter of suspicion, because those who were not with him were against him, and liberals had no use for Hitler. And then another man named McCarthy cast the same opprobrium on the word. Indeed, there was a time--a short but dismaying time--when many Americans began to distrust the word which derived from FREE. One thing we must all do. We must cherish and honor the word FREE or it will cease to apply to us." Eleanor Roosevelt wrote on the last page of her last book Tomorrow Is Now, months before her passing in 1963.<br /><br />Some 40 years later, a new generation of Hitlers and McCarthies are still demonizing the word "liberal" when love and peace and tolerance are needed more than ever in our world. How much does it take for people to wake up?Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2006/07/demonization-of-word-liberal.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1146383309424425582006-04-30T02:48:00.000-05:002006-04-30T02:50:32.316-05:00John Kenneth Galbraith, 97, Dies; Economist Held a Mirror to Society<div class="timestamp">April 30, 2006</div>John Kenneth Galbraith, 97, Dies; Economist Held a Mirror to Society <nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "> </nyt_byline><div class="byline">By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/holcomb_b_noble/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Holcomb B. Noble">HOLCOMB B. NOBLE</a> and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/douglas_martin/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Douglas Martin">DOUGLAS MARTIN</a></div> <nyt_text> </nyt_text><div id="articleBody"> <p>John Kenneth Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist, teacher and diplomat and an unapologetically liberal member of the political and academic establishment that he needled in prolific writings for more than half a century, died yesterday at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.</p> <p> Mr. Galbraith lived in Cambridge and at an "unfarmed farm" near Newfane, Vt. His death was confirmed by his son J. Alan Galbraith. </p> <p>Mr. Galbraith was one of the most widely read authors in the history of economics; among his 33 books was "The Affluent Society" (1958), one of those rare works that forces a nation to re-examine its values. He wrote fluidly, even on complex topics, and many of his compelling phrases �?? among them "the affluent society," "conventional wisdom" and "countervailing power" �?? became part of the language. </p> <p>An imposing presence, lanky and angular at 6 feet 8 inches tall, Mr. Galbraith was consulted frequently by national leaders, and he gave advice freely, though it may have been ignored as often as it was taken. Mr. Galbraith clearly preferred taking issue with the conventional wisdom he distrusted.</p> <p>He strived to change the very texture of the national conversation about power and its nature in the modern world by explaining how the planning of giant corporations superseded market mechanisms. His sweeping ideas, which might have gained even greater traction had he developed disciples willing and able to prove them with mathematical models, came to strike some as almost quaint in today's harsh, interconnected world where corporations devour one another.</p> <p>"The distinctiveness of his contribution appears to be slipping from view," Stephen P. Dunn wrote in The Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics in 2002.</p> <p>Mr. Galbraith, a revered lecturer for generations of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/harvard_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Harvard University.">Harvard</a> students, nonetheless always commanded attention.</p> <p>Robert Lekachman, a liberal economist who shared many of Mr. Galbraith's views on an affluent society that they both thought not generous enough to its poor or sufficiently attendant to its public needs, once described the quality of his discourse as "witty, supple, eloquent, and edged with that sheen of malice which the fallen sons of Adam always find attractive when it is directed at targets other than themselves." </p> <p>From the 1930's to the 1990's, Mr. Galbraith helped define the terms of the national political debate, influencing the direction of the Democratic Party and the thinking of its leaders. </p> <p>He tutored Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956, on Keynesian economics. He advised President <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/john_fitzgerald_kennedy/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about John Fitzgerald Kennedy.">John F. Kennedy</a> (often over lobster stew at the Locke-Ober restaurant in their beloved Boston) and served as his ambassador to India. </p> <p>Though he eventually broke with President <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/lyndon_baines_johnson/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Lyndon Baines Johnson.">Lyndon B. Johnson</a> over the war in Vietnam, he helped conceive Mr. Johnson's Great Society program and wrote a major presidential address that outlined its purposes. In 1968, pursuing his opposition to the war, he helped Senator Eugene J. McCarthy seek the Democratic nomination for president.</p> <p> In the course of his long career, he undertook a number of government assignments, including the organization of price controls in World War II and speechwriting for <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/franklin_delano_roosevelt/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.">Franklin D. Roosevelt</a>, Kennedy and Johnson. </p> <p>He drew on his experiences in government to write three satirical novels. One in 1968, "The Triumph," a best seller, was an assault on the State Department's slapstick attempts to assist a mythical banana republic, Puerto Santos. In 1990, he took on the Harvard economics department with "A Tenured Professor," ridiculing, among others, a certain outspoken character who bore no small resemblance to himself. </p> <p>At his death Mr. Galbraith was the Paul M. Warburg emeritus professor of economics at Harvard, where he had taught for most of his career. A popular lecturer, he treated economics as an aspect of society and culture rather than as an arcane discipline of numbers. </p> <p><strong>Keeping It Simple</strong></p> <p>Mr. Galbraith was admired, envied and sometimes scorned for his eloquence and wit and his ability to make complicated, dry issues understandable to any educated reader. He enjoyed his international reputation as a slayer of sacred cows and a maverick among economists whose pronouncements became known as "classic Galbraithian heresies." </p> <p>But other economists, even many of his fellow liberals, did not generally share his views on production and consumption, and he was not regarded by his peers as among the top-ranked theorists and scholars. Such criticism did not sit well with Mr. Galbraith, a man no one ever called modest, and he would respond that his critics had rightly recognized that his ideas were "deeply subversive of the established orthodoxy."</p> <p> "As a matter of vested interest, if not of truth," he added, "they were compelled to resist." He once said, "Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days last a lifetime." </p> <p>Nearly 40 years after writing "The Affluent Society," Mr. Galbraith updated it in 1996 as "The Good Society." In it, he said that his earlier concerns had only worsened: that if anything, America had become even more a "democracy of the fortunate," with the poor increasingly excluded from a fair place at the table.</p> <p>Mr. Galbraith gave broad thought to how America changed from a nation of small farms and workshops to one of big factories and superstores, and judgments of this legacy are as broad as his ambition. Beginning with "American Capitalism" in 1952, he laid out a detailed critique of an increasingly oligopolistic economy. Combined with works in the 1950's by writers like David Reisman, Vance Packard and William H. Whyte, the book changed people's views of the postwar world.</p> <p>Mr. Galbraith argued that technology mandated long-term contracts to diminish high-stakes uncertainty. He said companies used advertising to induce consumers to buy things they had never dreamed they needed. </p> <p>Other economists, like Gary S. Becker and George J. Stigler, both Nobel Prize winners, countered with proofs showing that advertising is essentially informative rather than manipulative.</p> <p>Many viewed Mr. Galbraith as the leading scion of the American institutionalist school of economics, commonly associated with Thorstein Veblen and his idea of "conspicuous consumption." This school deplored the universal pretensions of economic theory, and stressed the importance of historical and social factors in shaping "economic laws."</p> <p>Some, therefore, said Mr. Galbraith might best be called an "economic sociologist." This view was reinforced by Mr. Galbraith's nontechnical phrasing, called glibness by the envious and antagonistic. </p> <p>Mr. Galbraith's pride in following in the tradition of Veblen was challenged by the emergence of what came to be called the new institutionalist school. This approach, associated with the University of Chicago, claimed to prove that economics determines historical and political change, not vice versa.</p> <p>Some suggested that Mr. Galbraith's liberalism crippled his influence. In a review of "John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics" by Richard Parker (Farrar, 2005), J. Bradford DeLong wrote in Foreign Affairs that Mr. Galbraith's lifelong sermon of social democracy was destined to fail in a land of "rugged individualism." He compared Mr. Galbraith to Sisyphus, endlessly pushing the same rock up a hill that always turns out to be too steep.</p> <p>Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, maintains that Mr. Galbraith not only reached but also defined the summit of his field. In the 2000 commencement address at Harvard, Mr. Parker's book recounts, Mr. Sen said the influence of "The Affluent Society" was so pervasive that its many piercing insights were taken for granted.</p> <p>"It's like reading 'Hamlet' and deciding it's full of quotations," he said. </p> <p>John Kenneth Galbraith was born Oct. 15, 1908, on a 150-acre farm in Dunwich Township in southern Ontario, Canada, the only son of William Archibald and Catherine Kendall Galbraith. His forebears had left Scotland years before.</p> <p>His father was a farmer and schoolteacher, the head of a farm-cooperative insurance company, an organizer of the township telephone company, and a town and county auditor. His mother, whom he described as beautiful but decidedly firm, died when he was 14.</p> <p><strong>The Farming Life</strong></p> <p> Mr. Galbraith said in his memoir "A Life in Our Times" (1981) that no one could understand farming without knowing two things about it: a farmer's sense of inferiority and his appreciation of manual labor. His own sense of inferiority, he said, was coupled with his belief that the Galbraith clan was more intelligent, knowledgeable and affluent than its neighbors.</p> <p> "My legacy was the inherent insecurity of the farm-reared boy in combination with the aggressive feeling that I owed to all I encountered to make them better informed," he said.</p> <p>Mr. Galbraith said he inherited his liberalism, his interest in politics and his wit from his father. When he was about 8, he once recalled, he would join his father at political rallies. At one event, he wrote in his 1964 memoir "The Scotch," his father mounted a large pile of manure to address the crowd. </p> <p>"He apologized with ill-concealed sincerity for speaking from the Tory platform," Mr. Galbraith related. "The effect on this agrarian audience was electric. Afterward I congratulated him on the brilliance of the sally. He said, 'It was good but it didn't change any votes.' " </p> <p>At age 18 he enrolled at Ontario Agricultural College, where he took practical farming courses like poultry husbandry and basic plumbing. But as the Depression dragged down Canadian farmers, the questions of the way farm products were sold and at what prices became more urgent to him than how they were produced. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Toronto and enrolled at the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the University of California.">University of California</a>, Berkeley, where he received his master's degree in 1933 and his doctorate in agricultural economics in 1934.</p> <p>A major influence on him was the caustic social commentary he found in Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class." Mr. Galbraith called Veblen one of American history's most astute social scientists, but also acknowledged that he tended to be overcritical.</p> <p> "I've thought to resist this tendency," Mr. Galbraith said, "but in other respects Veblen's influence on me has lasted long. One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read."</p> <p>While at Berkeley, he began contributing to The Journal of Farm Economics and other publications. His writings came to the attention of Harvard, where he became an instructor and tutor from 1934 to 1939. In those years the theories of John Maynard Keynes were exciting economists everywhere because they promised solutions to the most urgent problems of the time: the Depression and unemployment. The government must intervene in moments of crisis, Lord Keynes maintained, and unbalance the budget if necessary to prime the pump and get the nation's economic machinery running again.</p> <p>Keynesianism gave economic validation to what President Roosevelt was doing, Mr. Galbraith thought, and he resolved in 1937 "to go to the temple" �?? Cambridge University �?? on a fellowship grant for a year of study with the disciples of Lord Keynes.</p> <p>In 1937 Mr. Galbraith married Catherine Merriam Atwater, the daughter of a prominent New York lawyer and a linguist, whom he met when she was a graduate student at Radcliffe. </p> <p>In addition to his wife and his son J. Alan, of Washington, a lawyer, he is survived by two other sons, Peter, a former United States ambassador to Croatia and a senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington, and James, an economist at the University of Texas; a sister, Catherine Denholm of Toronto; and six grandchildren. </p> <p> Mr. Galbraith became an American citizen, and taught economics at <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/princeton_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Princeton University.">Princeton</a> in 1939. But after the fall of France in 1940, Mr. Galbraith joined the Roosevelt administration to help manage an economy being prepared for war. He rose to become the administrator of wage and price controls in the Office of Price Administration. Prices remained stable, but he grew controversial, drawing the constant fire of industry complaints. "I reached the point that all price fixers reach," he said, "My enemies outnumbered my friends." </p> <p>He was forced to resign in 1943 and was rejected by the Army as too tall when he sought to enlist. He then held a variety of government and private jobs, including director of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey in 1945, director of the Office of Economic Security Policy in the State Department in 1946, and a member of the board of editors of Fortune magazine from 1943 to 1948. It was at Fortune, he said, that he became addicted to writing.</p> <p>In 1949 he returned to Harvard as a professor of economics; his lectures were delivered before standing-room-only audiences. And he began to write with intensity, rising early and writing at least two or three hours a day, before his normally full schedule of other duties began, for most of the rest of his life. </p> <p>He completed two books in 1952, "American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power" and "A Theory of Price Control." In "American Capitalism," he set out to debunk myths about the free market economy and explore concentrations of economic power. He described the pressures that corporations and unions exerted on each other for increased profits and increased wages, and said these countervailing forces kept those giant groups in equilibrium and the nation's economy prosperous and stable.</p> <p>In his 1981 memoir, he said that though the basic idea was still sound, he had been "a bit carried away" by his notion of countervailing power. "I made it far more inevitable and rather more equalizing than, in practice, it ever is," he wrote, adding that often it does not emerge, with the result that "numerous groups �?? the ghetto young, the rural poor, textile workers, many consumers �?? remain weak or helpless." </p> <p>He summarized the lessons of his days at the Office of Price Administration in "A Theory of Price Control," later calling it the best book he ever wrote. He said: "The only difficulty is that five people read it. Maybe 10. I made up my mind that I would never again place myself at the mercy of the technical economists who had the enormous power to ignore what I had written. I set out to involve a larger community."</p> <p> He wrote two more major books in the 50's dealing with economics, but both were aimed at a large general audience. Both were best sellers.</p> <p>In "The Great Crash 1929," he rattled the complacent, recalled the mistakes of an earlier day and suggested that some were being repeated as the book appeared, in 1955. Mr. Galbraith testified at a Senate hearing and said that another crash was inevitable. The stock market dropped sharply that day, and he was widely blamed. </p> <p> "The Affluent Society" appeared in 1958, making Mr. Galbraith known around the world. In it, he depicted a consumer culture gone wild, rich in goods but poor in the social services that make for community. He argued that America had become so obsessed with overproducing consumer goods that it had increased the perils of both inflation and recession by creating an artificial demand for frivolous or useless products, by encouraging overextension of consumer credit and by emphasizing the private sector at the expense of the public sector. He declared that this obsession with products like the biggest and fastest automobile damaged the quality of life in America by creating "private opulence and public squalor."</p> <p>Anticipating the environmental movement by nearly a decade, he asked, "Is the added production or the added efficiency in production worth its effect on ambient air, water and space �?? the countryside?" Mr. Galbraith called for a change in values that would shun the seductions of advertising and champion clean air, good housing and aid for the arts.</p> <p>Later, in "The New Industrial State" (1967), he tried to trace the shift of power from the landed aristocracy through the great industrialists to the technical and managerial experts of modern corporations. He called for a new class of intellectuals and professionals to determine policy. While critics, as usual, praised his ability to write compellingly, they also continued to complain that he oversimplified economic matters and either ignored or failed to keep up with corporate changes. Mr. Galbraith conceded some errors and revised his book in 1971.</p> <p><strong>A Move Into Politics</strong></p> <p>One of his early readers was Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois, who twice ran unsuccessfully for president against <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/dwight_david_eisenhower/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Dwight David Eisenhower.">Dwight D. Eisenhower</a>. Mr. Galbraith often wrote to Mr. Stevenson, introducing him to Keynesian taxation and unemployment policies. In 1953, Mr. Galbraith and Thomas K. Finletter, the former secretary of the Air Force and later ambassador to <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/north_atlantic_treaty_organization/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.">NATO</a>, formed a sort of brain trust for Mr. Stevenson that included Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, the historian <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/arthur_m_jr_schlesinger/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr..">Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.</a> and the foreign policy specialist George W. Ball.</p> <p>Although Mr. Galbraith did not at first regard Kennedy, a former student of his at Harvard, as a serious member of Congress, he began to change his view after Kennedy was elected to the Senate in 1952 and began calling him for advice. The senator's conversations became increasingly wide-ranging and well informed, Mr. Galbraith said, and his respect and affection grew.</p> <p>After Mr. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he appointed Mr. Galbraith the United States ambassador to India. There were those, Mr. Galbraith among them, who believed that the president had done this to get a potential loose cannon out of Washington.</p> <p> He said in his memoir: "Kennedy, I always believed, was pleased to have me in his administration, but at a suitable distance such as in India." Mr. Galbraith was fascinated with India; he had spent a year there in 1956 advising its government and was eager to return. </p> <p>He spent 27 months as ambassador, clashed with the State Department and was more favorably regarded as a diplomat by those outside the government. He fought for increased American military and economic aid for India and acted as a sort of informal adviser to the Indian government on economic policy. Known by his staff as "the Great Mogul," he achieved an excellent rapport with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other senior officials in the Indian government. </p> <p>When India became embroiled in a border war with China in the Himalayas in 1962, Ambassador Galbraith effectively took charge of both the American military and the diplomatic response during what was a brief but potentially explosive crisis. He saw to it that India received restrained American help and took it upon himself to announce that the United States recognized India's disputed northern borders. </p> <p>The reason he had so much control over the American response, he said, was that the border fighting occurred during the far more consequential Cuban missile crisis, and no one at the highest levels at the White House, the State Department or the Pentagon was readily responding to his cables. </p> <p>Mr. Galbraith published "Ambassador's Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years," a book based on the diary he kept during his time in India, in 1969. A year earlier he published "Indian Painting: The Scenes, Themes and Legends," which he wrote with Mohinder Singh Randhawa. An avid champion of Indian art, he donated much of his collection to the Harvard University Art Museums.</p> <p> In 1963, Mr. Galbraith added fiction to his repertory for the first time with "The McLandress Dimension," a novel he wrote under the pseudonym Mark Epernay. </p> <p>After Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Galbraith served as an adviser to President Johnson, meeting with him often at the White House or on trips to the president's ranch in Texas to talk about what could be accomplished with the Great Society programs. Mr. Galbraith said that Johnson had summoned him to write the final draft of his speech outlining the purposes of the Great Society, and that when the writing was done, said: "I'm not going to change a word. That's great." </p> <p>The relationship between the two men soon broke apart over their differences over the war in Vietnam. Nevertheless, when Adlai Stevenson died in 1965, the ambassadorship to the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the United Nations.">United Nations</a> became vacant, and word reached Mr. Galbraith that the president was considering him as Mr. Stevenson's successor.</p> <p><strong>A Job Declined</strong></p> <p>Not wanting to be placed in the position of having to defend administration positions he strongly opposed, Mr. Galbraith suggested Justice Arthur J. Goldberg of the Supreme Court. The president named Mr. Goldberg, and Mr. Galbraith later blamed himself for a "poisonous" mistake that "cost the court a good and liberal jurist." Others said he took too much credit for what happened. </p> <p> In 1973 he published "Economics and the Public Purpose," in which he sought to extend the planning system already used by the industrial core of the economy to the market economy, to small-business owners and to entrepreneurs. Mr. Galbraith called for a "new socialism," with more steeply progressive taxes; public support of the arts; public ownership of housing, medical and transportation facilities; and the conversion of some corporations and military contractors into public corporations.</p> <p> He continued to rise early and, despite the seeming effortlessness of his prose, revised each day's work at least five times. "It was usually on about the fourth day that I put in that note of spontaneity for which I am known," he said. </p> <p>He served as president of the American Economic Association, the profession's highest honor, and was elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He continued to pour out magazine articles, book reviews, op-ed essays, letters to editors; he lectured everywhere, sometimes debating <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/william_f_jr_buckley/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about William F. Buckley Jr..">William F. Buckley Jr.</a>, his friend and Gstaad skiing partner. He was so prolific that Art Buchwald, the humorist, once introduced him by citing his literary production: "Since 1959 alone, he has written 12 books, 135 articles, 61 book reviews, 16 book introductions, 312 book blurbs and 105,876 letters to The New York Times, of which all but 3 have been printed."</p> <p>In 1977 he wrote and narrated "The Age of Uncertainty," a 13-part television series surveying 200 years of economic theory and practice. In 1990 he wrote "A Tenured Professor," about a Harvard professor who devised a legal, foolproof and computer-assisted system for playing the stock market and used his billions of dollars in profits on programs for education and peace �?? only to be investigated by Congress for un-American activities and forced to shut down his operations. </p> <p>In 1996, as Mr. Galbraith approached his 90th year, he wrote "The Good Society." Matthew Miller wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "We're not likely to find as elegant a little restatement of the liberal creed, or its call to conscience."</p> <p> Mr. Galbraith said Republicans out to roll back the welfare state made a fundamental error in thinking that politicians and their actions drive history. In fact, he argued, it is the reverse. Liberals did not create big government; history did.</p> <p>Mr. Galbraith, who received the Medal of Freedom from President <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Bill Clinton.">Bill Clinton</a> in 2000, continued to make his views known. Some were surprising, like his speech in 1999 praising Johnson's presidency, which he had helped to bring down by working with McCarthy.</p> <p>There always seemed to be one more book. One, "The Essential Galbraith" (2001), was a collection of essays and excerpts that a reviewer in Business Week said remained very timely. Another, "Name-Dropping from F.D.R. On" (1999), recounted encounters with the powerful, including President Kennedy's response when Mr. Galbraith complained that an article in The New York Times had described him as arrogant. </p> <p>Kennedy retorted that he didn't see why it shouldn't: "Everybody else does."</p> <p>In 2004, Mr. Galbraith, who was then 95, published "The Economics of Innocent Fraud," a short book that questioned much of the standard economic wisdom by questioning the ability of markets to regulate themselves, the usefulness of monetary policy and the effectiveness of corporate governance.</p> <p> He remained optimistic about the ability of government to improve the lot of the less fortunate. "Let there be a coalition of the concerned," he urged. "The affluent would still be affluent, the comfortable still comfortable, but the poor would be part of the political system."</p></div>Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2006/04/john-kenneth-galbraith-97-dies.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1131433511559758492005-11-08T02:05:00.000-05:002006-04-30T02:56:09.596-05:00Badge of Honor<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/santos.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/santos.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>"Well, liberals ended slavery in this country. Liberals' got women the right to vote. Liberals' got African Americans the right to vote. Liberals' created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals' ended segregation. Liberals' passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals' created Medicare. Liberals' passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did the conservatives have to do? They opposed every single one of those things, every one. When you try to hurl that label at my feet as if it's something to run away from, I will pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honor." Matt Santos (D-TX), Democratic Presidential Nominee 2006 of the West Wing, 11/7/2005Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/11/badge-of-honor.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1132049071509426592005-11-05T04:25:00.000-05:002005-11-15T05:20:04.286-05:00A Year After<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/ElectoralCollege1888.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/ElectoralCollege1888.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/ElectoralCollege1896.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/ElectoralCollege1896.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/ElectoralCollege1916.2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/ElectoralCollege1916.2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/ElectoralCollege2000.1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/ElectoralCollege2000.1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />The colors are the same. The people are the same. Party labels are different.<br /><br />The liberals then and the liberals now. The Yankee liberals founded the Republican Party and invaded the Conferderacy. Then they followed the Northern Democrat called Franklin Delano Roosevelt and left this Republican Party at last. A ceuntry after the Civil War, the liberals took over the Democratic Party and forced out the ex-Confederate Dixiecrats, who had nowhere to go but to find their new turf in the Republican Party that the Yankees first founded. How would Jefferson Davis have imagined his Conferderate states all ended up as the bastion of "the Party of Lincoln" and how would he feel?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/ElectoralCollege2004.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/ElectoralCollege2004.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>"Stop saying that blue state people are out of touch with the values and morals of the red states. I'm not out of touch with them. I just don't share them. In fact, and I know this is about 140 years late, but to the Southern States, I would say, 'Upon further consideration, you CAN go. That's what you've always wanted, and we've reconsidered. So go ahead, and take Texas with you.' You know what they say. If at first you don't secede, try, try again. And give my regards to President Charlie Daniels." - Bill Maher, 11/5/2004Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/11/year-after.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1130362860071031332005-10-26T16:41:00.000-05:002005-10-26T16:43:32.033-05:00From DailyKos.comThis is what O'Reilly thinks (real):<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/oreilly2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/oreilly2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />This is what Fox News would have done (had they been around for that long):<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/oreilly1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/oreilly1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/foxnews1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/foxnews1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/10/from-dailykoscom.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1130291143660739042005-10-25T20:45:00.000-05:002007-05-29T18:15:01.785-05:00"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_pknTcrWrnm4/Rlyz24SWKQI/AAAAAAAAAAU/ALdmUtKcG-E/s1600-h/bushface.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_pknTcrWrnm4/Rlyz24SWKQI/AAAAAAAAAAU/ALdmUtKcG-E/s400/bushface.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070125035915979010" border="0" /></a><br /><a><br /></a>Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-do-you-ask-man-to-be-last-man-to.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1132830005032240552005-10-20T04:57:00.000-05:002007-09-25T00:19:21.921-05:00Living to Die by Edgar WinterYou know I've heard it said there's beauty in distortion.<br />By some people who've withdrawn to find their heads<br />Now they say that there is humor in misfortune<br />You know I wonder if they'll laugh when I am dead<br /><br />Why am I fighting to live if I 'm just living to fight?<br />Why am I trying to see when there ain't nothing in sight?<br />Why am I trying to give when no one gives me a try?<br />Why am I dying to live if I'm just living to die?<br /><br />Hey, you know some people say that values are subjective,<br />But they're just speaking words that someone else has said.<br />And so they live and fight and kill with no objective.<br />Sometimes it's hard to tell the living from the dead.<br /><br />Why am I fighting to live if I 'm just living to fight?<br />Why am I trying to see when there ain't nothing in sight?<br />Why am I trying to give when no one gives me a try?<br />Why am I dying to live if I'm just living to die?<br /><br />Yeah, you know I used to weave my words into confusion.<br />And so I hope you'll understand me when I 'm through<br />You know I used to live my life as an illusion,<br />But reality will make my dreams come true.<br /><br />So I'll keep fighting to live till there's no reason to fight<br />And I'll keep trying to see until the end is in sight<br />You know I'm trying to give so c'mon give me a try<br />You know I'm dying to live until I'm ready �?�<br />'til I'm ready...<br />'til I'm ready...<br />'til I'm ready to dieRamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/10/living-to-die-by-edgar-winter.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1129743753996933282005-10-19T12:42:00.000-05:002007-09-25T00:22:34.076-05:00Little Boxes by Malvina ReynoldsChorus:<br /><br /> Little boxes on the hillside<br /> LIttle boxes made of ticky-tacky<br /> LIttle boxes on the hillside<br /> Little boxes all the same<br /><br /> There's a pink on and a blue one<br /> And a green one and a yellow one<br /> And they're all made out of ticky-tacky<br /> And they all look just the same<br /><br />Verse 1:<br /><br /> And the people in the boxes<br /> All went to the university<br /> Where they all got put in boxes,<br /> Little boxes all the same.<br /> And they're doctors and they're lawyers<br /> And business executives<br /> And they're all made out of ticky-tacky<br /> And they all look just the same<br /><br />Chorus<br /><br />Verse 2:<br /><br /> And they all play on the golf course<br /> And they drink their martini dry<br /> And they all have pretty children<br /> And the children go to school<br /> And the children go to summer camp<br /> And then to the university<br /> And they all get put in boxes<br /> And they all come out the same<br /><br />Chorus<br /><br />Verse 3: (by Jodey Bateman)<br /><br /> Politicians, politicians<br /> Politicans making promises<br /> Politicians, politicians<br /> Politicians all the same<br /> There's republicans and there's democrats<br /> And there's liberals and conservatives<br /> And they're all made out of ticky-tacky<br /> And they all sound just the same.Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/10/little-boxes-by-malvina-reynolds.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1127028258338011332005-09-18T02:22:00.000-05:002005-09-18T02:24:18.356-05:00Forgetting Reinhold NiebuhrForgetting Reinhold Niebuhr<br />By ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR.<br />Published: September 18, 2005<br /><br />THE recent outburst of popular religiosity in the United States is a most dramatic and unforeseen development in American life. As Europe grows more secular, America grows more devout. George W. Bush is the most aggressively religious president Americans have ever had. American conservatives applaud his "faith-based" presidency, an office heretofore regarded as secular. The religious right has become a potent force in national politics. Evangelicals now outnumber mainline Protestants and crowd megachurches. Billy Graham attracts supplicants by the thousand in Sodom and Gomorrah, a k a New York City. The Supreme Court broods over the placement of the Ten Commandments. Evangelicals take over the Air Force Academy, a government institution maintained by taxpayers' dollars; the academy's former superintendent says it will be six years before religious tolerance is restored. Mel Gibson's movie "Passion of the Christ" draws nearly $400 million at the domestic box office.<br /><br />In the midst of this religious commotion, the name of the most influential American theologian of the 20th century rarely appears - Reinhold Niebuhr. It may be that most "people of faith" belong to the religious right, and Niebuhr was on secular issues a determined liberal. But left evangelicals as well as their conservative brethren hardly ever invoke his name. Jim Wallis's best-selling "God's Politics," for example, is a liberal tract, but the author mentions Niebuhr only twice, and only in passing.<br /><br />Niebuhr was born in Missouri in 1892, the son of a German-born minister of the German Evangelical Synod of North America. He was trained for the ministry at the Synod's Eden Theological Seminary and at the Yale Divinity School. In the 1920's he took a church in industrial Detroit, the scene of bitter labor-capital conflict. Niebuhr's sympathies lay with the unions, and he joined Norman Thomas's Socialist Party. Meanwhile, New York's Union Theological Seminary, impressed by the power of his preaching and his writing, recruited him in 1928 for its faculty. There he remained for the rest of his life. He died in 1971.<br /><br />Why, in an age of religiosity, has Niebuhr, the supreme American theologian of the 20th century, dropped out of 21st-century religious discourse? Maybe issues have taken more urgent forms since Niebuhr's death - terrorism, torture, abortion, same-sex marriage, Genesis versus Darwin, embryonic stem-cell research. But maybe Niebuhr has fallen out of fashion because 9/11 has revived the myth of our national innocence. Lamentations about "the end of innocence" became favorite clichés at the time.<br /><br />Niebuhr was a critic of national innocence, which he regarded as a delusion. After all, whites coming to these shores were reared in the Calvinist doctrine of sinful humanity, and they killed red men, enslaved black men and later on imported yellow men for peon labor - not much of a background for national innocence. "Nations, as individuals, who are completely innocent in their own esteem," Niebuhr wrote, "are insufferable in their human contacts." The self-righteous delusion of innocence encouraged a kind of Manichaeism dividing the world between good (us) and evil (our critics).<br /><br />Niebuhr brilliantly applied the tragic insights of Augustine and Calvin to moral and political issues. He poured out his thoughts in a stream of powerful books, articles and sermons. His major theological work was his two-volume "Nature and Destiny of Man" (1941, 1943). The evolution of his political thought can be traced in three influential books: "Moral Man and Immoral Society" (1932); "The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense" (1944); "The Irony of American History" (1952).<br /><br />In these and other works, Niebuhr emphasized the mixed and ambivalent character of human nature - creative impulses matched by destructive impulses, regard for others overruled by excessive self-regard, the will to power, the individual under constant temptation to play God to history. This is what was known in the ancient vocabulary of Christianity as the doctrine of original sin. Niebuhr summed up his political argument in a single powerful sentence: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." (Niebuhr, in the fashion of the day, used "man" not to exculpate women but as shorthand for "human being.")<br /><br />The notion of sinful man was uncomfortable for my generation. We had been brought up to believe in human innocence and even in human perfectibility. This was less a liberal delusion than an expression of an all-American DNA. Andrew Carnegie had articulated the national faith when, after acclaiming the rise of man from lower to higher forms, he declared: "Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection." In 1939, Charles E. Merriam of the University of Chicago, the dean of American political scientists, wrote in "The New Democracy and the New Despotism": "There is a constant trend in human affairs toward the perfectibility of mankind. This was plainly stated at the time of the French Revolution and has been reasserted ever since that time, and with increasing plausibility." Human ignorance and unjust institutions remained the only obstacles to a more perfect world. If proper education of individuals and proper reform of institutions did their job, such obstacles would be removed. For the heart of man was O.K. The idea of original sin was a historical, indeed a hysterical, curiosity that should have evaporated with Jonathan Edwards's Calvinism.<br /><br />Still, Niebuhr's concept of original sin solved certain problems for my generation. The 20th century was, as Isaiah Berlin said, "the most terrible century in Western history." The belief in human perfectibility had not prepared us for Hitler and Stalin. The death camps and the gulags proved that men were capable of infinite depravity. The heart of man is obviously not O.K. Niebuhr's analysis of human nature and history came as a vast illumination. His argument had the double merit of accounting for Hitler and Stalin and for the necessity of standing up to them. Niebuhr himself had been a pacifist, but he was a realist and resigned from the antiwar Socialist Party in 1940.<br /><br />Many of us understood original sin as a metaphor. Niebuhr's distinction between taking the Bible seriously and taking it literally invited symbolic interpretation and made it easy for seculars to join the club. Morton White, the philosopher, spoke satirically of Atheists for Niebuhr. (Luis Buñuel, the Spanish film director, was asked about his religious views. "I'm an atheist," he replied. "Thank God.") "About the concept of 'original sin,' " Niebuhr wrote in 1960, "I now realize that I made a mistake in emphasizing it so much, though I still believe that it might be rescued from its primitive corruptions. But it is a red rag to most moderns. I find that even my realistic friends are inclined to be offended by it, though our interpretations of the human situation are identical."<br /><br />The Second World War left America the most powerful nation in the world, and the cold war created a new model of international tension. Niebuhr was never more involved in politics. He helped found Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal organization opposed to the two Joes, Stalin and McCarthy. He was tireless (until strokes slowed him up) in cautioning Americans not to succumb to the self-righteous delusions of innocence and infallibility. "From the earliest days of its history to the present moment," Niebuhr wrote in 1952, "there is a deep layer of messianic consciousness in the mind of America. We never dreamed that we would have as much political power as we possess today; nor for that matter did we anticipate that the most powerful nation on earth would suffer such an ironic refutation of its dreams of mastering history." For messianism - carrying on one man's theory of God's work - threatened to abolish the unfathomable distance between the Almighty and human sinners.<br /><br />Niebuhr would have rejoiced at Mr. Dooley's definition of a fanatic. According to the Irish bartender created by Finley Peter Dunne, a fanatic "does what he thinks th' Lord wud do if He only knew th' facts iv th' case." There is no greater human presumption than to read the mind of the Almighty, and no more dangerous individual than the one who has convinced himself that he is executing the Almighty's will. "A democracy," Niebuhr said, "cannot of course engage in an explicit preventive war," and he lamented the "inability to comprehend the depth of evil to which individuals and communities may sink, particularly when they try to play the role of God to history."<br /><br />Original sin, by tainting all human perceptions, is the enemy of absolutes. Mortal man's apprehension of truth is fitful, shadowy and imperfect; he sees through the glass darkly. Against absolutism Niebuhr insisted on the "relativity of all human perspectives," as well as on the sinfulness of those who claimed divine sanction for their opinions. He declared himself "in broad agreement with the relativist position in the matter of freedom, as upon every other social and political right or principle." In pointing to the dangers of what Justice Robert H. Jackson called "compulsory godliness," Niebuhr argued that "religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values." Religion, he warned, could be a source of error as well as wisdom and light. Its role should be to inculcate, not a sense of infallibility, but a sense of humility. Indeed, "the worst corruption is a corrupt religion."<br /><br />One imagines a meeting between two men - say, for example, the president of the United States and the last pope - who have private lines to the Almighty but discover fundamental disagreements over the message each receives. Thus Bush is the fervent champion of the war against Iraq; John Paul II stoutly opposed the war. Bush is the fervent champion of capital punishment; John Paul II stoutly opposed capital punishment. How do these two absolutists reconcile contradictory and incompatible communications from the Almighty?<br /><br />The Civil War, that savage, fraternal conflict, was the great national trauma, and Lincoln was for Reinhold Niebuhr the model statesman. Of all American presidents, Lincoln had the most acute religious insight. Though not enrolled in any denomination, he brooded over the infinite mystery of the Almighty. To claim knowledge of the divine will and purpose was for Lincoln the unpardonable sin.<br /><br />He summed up his religious sense in his second inaugural, delivered in the fifth year of the Civil War. Both warring halves of the Union, he said, read the same Bible and prayed to the same God. Each invoked God's aid against the other. Let us judge not that we be not judged. Let us fight on with "firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." But let us never forget, Lincoln reminded the nation in memorable words, "The Almighty has His own purposes."<br /><br />Thurlow Weed, the cynical and highly intelligent boss of New York, sent Lincoln congratulations on the inaugural address. "I believe it is not immediately popular," Lincoln replied. "Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it."<br /><br />"The combination of moral resoluteness about the immediate issues," Niebuhr commented on Lincoln's second inaugural, "with a religious awareness of another dimension of meaning and judgment must be regarded as almost a perfect model of the difficult but not impossible task of remaining loyal and responsible toward the moral treasures of a free society on the one hand while yet having some religious vantage point over the struggle."<br /><br />Like all God-fearing men, Americans are never safe "against the temptation of claiming God too simply as the sanctifier of whatever we most fervently desire." This is vanity. To be effective in the world, we need "a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us" and "a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy's demonry and our vanities." None of the insights of religious faith contradict "our purpose and duty of preserving our civilization. They are, in fact, prerequisites for saving it."<br /><br />The last lines of "The Irony of American History," written in 1952, resound more than a half-century later. "If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory."<br /><br />Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is the author, most recently, of "War and the American Presidency."Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/09/forgetting-reinhold-niebuhr.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1126072322676756842005-09-07T00:52:00.000-05:002006-02-26T04:54:46.763-05:00The political genius of Team Bush<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/1600/gwbtrina.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7380/741/320/gwbtrina.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>"I'm telling you most importantly I want to thank my public employees that have worked 24/7. They're burned out, the doctors, the nurses. And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night. (Broke down in tears.) They've had press conferences -- I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody." - Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, Meet the Press, 9/4/05Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/09/political-genius-of-team-busha.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1125252649685184192005-08-28T13:10:00.000-05:002005-08-28T13:10:49.706-05:00Tomorrow is Now"Long ago, there was a noble word, liberal, which derives from the word free. Now a strange thing happened to that word. A man named Hitler made it a term of abuse, a matter of suspicion, because those who were not with him were against him, and liberals had no use for Hitler. And then a man named McCarthy cast the same opprobrium on the word. Indeed, there was a time ... when many Americans began to distrust the word which derived from free. One thing we must all do. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us." - Eleanor Roosevelt, Tomorrow is Now (1963)Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/08/tomorrow-is-now.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1125183618149623612005-08-27T18:00:00.000-05:002007-10-06T15:11:27.935-05:00Senior Thesis<a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/ramlau/OneWorld.doc">One World: A chapter on outsourcing and its implications</a>Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/08/senior-thesis.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1124571240209320462005-08-20T15:54:00.000-05:002005-08-20T17:09:50.693-05:00What's your theological worldview?Classical Liberal 86%<br />Emergent/Postmodern 79%<br />Modern Liberal 57%<br />Neo orthodox 14%<br />Reformed Evangelical 14%<br />Roman Catholic 14%<br />Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 7%<br />Fundamentalist 0%<br />Charismatic/Pentecostal 0%<br /><br />You are a classical liberal. You are sceptical about much of the historicity of the Bible, and the most important thing Jesus has done is to set us a good moral example that we are to follow. Doctrines like the trinity and the incarnation are speculative and not really important, and in the face of science and philosophy the surest way we can be certain about God is by our inner awareness of him. Discipleship is expressed by good moral behaviour, but inward religious feeling is most important.<span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span>Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/08/whats-your-theological-worldview.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1124067243007521292005-08-14T19:54:00.000-05:002005-08-14T19:54:03.013-05:00Benjamin Franklin the Deist"The bell ringing for church, we went thither immediately, and, with hearts full of gratitude, returned sincere thanks to God for the mercies we had received. Were I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should on this occasion vow to build a chapel to some saint; but as I am not, if I were to vow at all, it should be to build a lighthouse." - Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Deborah Franklin, 17 Jul 1757
<br />
<br />"If I had ever before been an atheist, I should knwo have been convinced of the Being and government of a Deity!" - Benjamin Franklin, Letter to William Strahan, 19 Aug 1784
<br />
<br />"You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life without the assistance afforded by religion, but think how great a proportion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced and inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice. He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face." - Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Thomas Paine, 4 Jul 1786 (Independence Day!)
<br />
<br />"I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children...
<br />
<br />"I have some doubts as to his (Jesus's) divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble." - Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Ezra Stiles, 9 Mar 1790
<br />Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/08/benjamin-franklin-deist.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1123976472992774192005-08-13T18:41:00.000-05:002005-08-13T18:42:25.430-05:00Calvin Coolidge"We all came to America on different boats, but we're in the same boat now, and we have to learn to get along with each other." - Calvin Coolidge after the Ku Klux Klan march, 1924Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/08/calvin-coolidge.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1123822927690477822005-08-12T00:02:00.000-05:002005-08-12T00:08:52.046-05:00Bill Maher on Larry KingKING: What do you say to those intelligent -- the Billy Grahams, who say they have no doubt? They have no doubt. They're going somewhere. They believe it.<br /><br />MAHER: Well, they've brain-washed themselves. That's what religion is. It's brain-washing people to believe what you can never believe. And it's childish. It's childish. Instead of just saying, I don't know. That's what the adult thing is to do. To say, I don't know, and I'm going to be a good person for the sake of being a good person.<br /><br />KING: Not because someone told you to be a good person or because...<br /><br />MAHER: I don't think you're good if you're doing it to get to heaven, first of all. That's not a -- that's not a reason. That's not a good reason to be a decent person. I believe that, in just kind of a vague way, that as you get older and approach death, you should become more selfless. You should start to rid yourself of the addictions and shackles of selfishness that have bonded you your whole life. Sex and materialism and egoism and looksism and all the things that we care so much about when we're living our day-to-day lives. I hope when I'm 80 years old, I'm not having sex, as opposed to so many people who have plastic surgery and try to keep themselves somehow in the game. I hope in 30 years, I've advanced to the point spiritually where those are not my concerns at all...<br /><br />If somebody says to you, aliens took over the Earth 75 million years ago and have infested your soul, the proper, rational response is, "Well, I guess anything's possible." But if you say, as Mr. Cruise would, as any Scientologist would, to that proposition, "Yes that's undeniable, infallible, incontestable truth," then excuse me, you, like all religious people, have a neurological disorder. And the only reason why people think it's sane is because so many other people believe the same thing. It's sanity by consensus.Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/08/bill-maher-on-larry-king.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9903188.post-1123701956539351442005-08-10T14:25:00.000-05:002005-08-12T00:09:13.423-05:00Voting Rights Address by Lyndon Johnson in 1965He was sincere and very brave, knowing it was a political suicide.Ramhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17839603217700004924noreply@blogger.comhttp://ramlau.blogspot.com/2005/08/voting-rights-address-by-lyndon.html